[Mystro]

I am a huge Panerai fan and long time owner and after talking in length with many of their concierge and recent service department has given me a good idea of where Panerai is today:

The last ten years with Panerai is like living with a crazy genius. Some ideas with advanced materials like Carbotech fits the brands adventurous image and style. Other ideas like Due, Esteel, and non hacking movements is utter nonsense. The idea of removing the hacking feature from their top in-house P.9010 movement when it started with the feature was a bizarre and critical mistake that still has never been answered or addressed why.. Panerai pretends this is normal and goes about their next release as if nothing has changed.

The most insulting slap in the face to me was: any watch with a camlock crown protector better be 300wr. If it’s not, it ain’t a diving watch and to have as just a “design element” is as idiotic as wearing a snorkel mask while playing pickle ball with dive fins on. They prostituted one of their most iconic and functional case designs to go on an inferior model that doesn’t require it.

The prices are now out of touch with the level of watches they are making yet they go on obliviously believing their own press to justify their msrp. They have developed a certain arrogance that only Rolex can really pull off with their product and I suspect it is to justify their price point.

Panerai is inconsistent as a brand and unless you can tune out the crap and focus on a few outstanding pieces, they will go on devaluing the brand posing as their long past image. All the right pieces and image of Panerai is still there but they need to regroup and clean house. Develop a internal code of design ethics on maintaining the integrity of their watches and their brand integrity will follow organically. If you are going to use a Richmont base movement in a smaller case design, then your msrp can’t be the same as a in-house Panerai movement.


Richmond in general doesn’t impress me. The Richmond movements need to have higher standards of accuracy and METAS would be an ideal outside standard to keep some independent movement integrity of performance which they currently do not have. Panerai skates around this and I have addressed it directly to their service dept and they state they have their own set of accuracy standards for each movement model within the way THEY do the testing. +2 or -2 isn’t in their level of testing or expectations.
This is where Omega absolutely blows Richmond out of the water with their movements on every level.